Roman Rosette

In the middle of the 19th century, popular American pressed glass designs emulated ancient Greek and Roman art and architecture. This exceptionally rare covered sugar bowl was pressed in the “Roman Rosette” pattern on a shape that evokes a classical urn. Decorative elements include gadrooning on the foot, a band of fluted vertical lines on the bowl and matching lid, and an 11-petal rosette on the exterior bottom of the bowl. It is very likely that this sugar bowl is the same one that was shown in the exhibition “The Story of American Pressed Glass of the Lacy Period, 1825–1850” at the Corning Museum in 1954, and that the bowl was formerly in the William J. Elsholz Collection. The only other known example is in the collection of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond. Early pressing technology yielded objects with thick glass rims before the introduction of the cap ring around 1830. The ring allowed for uniformly thinner and decorative rims. Curiously, this bowl was likely created after the advent of the cap ring, which was not employed during its production, as it was with other known forms in the pattern. The bowl’s scalloped rim was ground and polished, handfinishing that was necessary to eliminate rough or sharp edges. Highly refined sugar was a luxury product and status symbol. Glass sugar bowls such as this example displayed the best sugar a family could afford to sweeten beverages, both alcoholic and nonalcoholic. Cheaper production costs made refined sugar, like pressed glass tableware, an increasingly affordable domestic staple over the course of the 19th century. Unsigned. Published: Rose 1954 (see 2013.4.32), p. 112, cat. no. 408. For more information on pressing technology, see Wilson 1994 (2013.4.27), v. 1, pp. 265–285. For more about sugar and sugar bowls, see Louise Conway Belden, Festive Tradition, Table Decoration & Desserts in America, 1650–1900: Two Hundred Years of American Party Tables, New York: W. W. Norton, 1983, pp. 102–134.